Grasscloth Delaminating (Coming Apart)

Digital Image

Digital Image

In this dining room, I hung 15 full-length strips of this grasscloth wallpaper. All six double rolls came from the same run. All went well with 14 strips.

But when I started to paste the back of this strip (Photo 1), the paper immediately swelled and wrinkled and buckled, particularly down the center of the strip. When I turned the paper over, the buckling was quite evident there, too. It was so bad that the paper had actually pulled away from the grass sewn and pasted to the front.

You never know if this is going to disappear when the paper dries, and I sure didn’t want those ugly waves showing on my client’s walls. The strip was unusable and had to be thrown away. Luckily, they had bought sufficient paper that I could cut another strip. And double luckily, no other strips had this problem.

I’m curious to know what caused this. Possibly a different paper backing that absorbed moisture from the paste differently? But how could that happen in the same run, which are all manufactured at the same time? Or maybe the adhesive holding the grass onto the backing was sketchy in this one strip.

Tags: buckling, dining room, double rolls, grasscloth, paste, wallpaper, wrinkling